Recovering Evangelicals #64 – The primordial “cosmic egg” (re-release)
Once again, a re-release from the past in anticipation of new episodes starting next week. Here, we look at one idea of how the universe came into existence. This is how we summarized it when we released this over a year and a half ago …
When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design.
We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological evolution — into a cosmic egg and setting that on the stage of the pre-universe … and watched with delight as that exploded into the universe we see now in front of us.
Our guest now adds more detail to that image: those ingredients might have also included randomness, probability, order, predictability, determinism, massively large numbers, dynamic complexity, and chaos theory.
And in the process, he tells us he’s found the meaning and purpose of the universe itself: it’s been front-end loaded (the cosmic egg above) to create agape-capable beings like ourselves.
We’ll warn the listeners in advance though: this could be the most intellectually challenging episode we’ve done so far. We’ll be putting some of the most recent advances in science, philosophy, and theology on the table. We still believe you’ll be able to keep up with the discussion, but you’ll need to stay focused!
If you’re intrigued by this, you’ll be pleased to know that this is only a shortened version of two chapters in a book Dr. Barrigar has written.2
Let us know what you think, and share this with a friend.
- Barrigar, C., “God’s Agape/Probability design for the universe.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70(3):161-174, 2018.
- Barrigar, C. J. Freedom all the way up: God and the meaning of life in a scientific age. FriesenPress, 2021.
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